Dell plans to spend over $20bn in 5 years as data is the world’s new oil

RIYADH: Dell Technologies plans to investe over $20 billion in six major technologies during the next five years as data is becoming the world’s new oil, an executive said. 

“Dell Technologies will spend $4.5 billion on R&D per year going forward,” the company’s senior vice president of Middle East, Turkey and Africa told Arab News in an interview during LEAP event in RIyadh.

“We have invested a combined $20B in R&D over the last 5 fiscal years, resulting in tech leadership, innovation and a market-leading portfolio of best-of-breed technologies, solutions and services ranging from the core to the edge to the cloud,” Mohammed Amin said.

The six technologies including 5G and artificial intelligence, according to Amin. The other four technologies include multicloud, edge computing, machine learning and cybersecurity, he added.

“Those are the six technologies that are going to be the trend in the next couple of years[…]. We’re investing a lot of dollars for those six technologies. Not only that, we’re having a lot of initiatives around those six technologies with so many customers in the Kingdom,” Amin said.

He emphasized on the importance of data in the coming period, saying that it will be the “new oil” by 2030 whereby 50 percent of the global economy will be digital. Edge computing is another area of interest, Amin indicated, as 85 percent of data will be created using this technology in the next three years.

Amin added that Saudi Arabia is among Dell’s top 10 countries, where they have established their largest office within the emerging markets area and employed 300 employees.

“Being close to the customer, we understand what the customers in the Kingdom want because we are part of the customer-business transformation,” he added.

Vision 2030 and its digital plans were also cited by the senior vice president as an important aspect of the Kingdom’s transformation.

“I’ve been coming to Saudi in the last 25 years, and I have to tell you what I’ve seen in Saudi in the last three years was an amazing transformation.”